“The voter receipt that the Comelec is to issue on Election Day will be incomplete. It will contain only the names of candidates that the voter is to mark on the ballot. Absent will be other crucial data: the location (province, city, municipality, district) and number of the precinct; the PCOS number; and the ballot number, time and date.

Thus the purpose of the receipt – as voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) – would be defeated. It would not serve to foil election fraud. On the contrary, it would fool voters that the balloting is clean.

Such slip of paper would be as worthless as fake receipts that cheating sellers give out. Official Receipts must contain not only the name of the buyer, the item purchased, and the amount. It must detail the seller’s name, address, TIN (tax identification number); BIR approval; and date (if possible also time and place) of transaction. An incomplete receipt cannot serve the buyer as proof of purchase, or tax deduction. Even the cheating seller later can deny issuing such false O.R. That’s why such fake is prohibited. Yet it proliferates, due to spotty law enforcement.

If incomplete, the VVPAT too is illegal and contrary to enforcement order of the Supreme Court. The Election Automation Act of 2008 requires the VVPAT as one of five basic security safeguards of the vote counting machine (VCM). The VVPAT serves two roles: First, on the spot, it is the voter’s countercheck if his assigned VCM reads his ballot right. Second, as paper audit trail, it is the electorate’s countercheck if all the 97,500 VCMs counted and transmitted the votes right.”

West Virginia University’s (WVU) Student Government Association (SGA) is debating whether to use a blockchain-based voting platform for its upcoming elections, according to the college’s student-run newspaper, The Daily Athenauem.

The initiative, proposed by WVU students Ankur Kumar and Ricky Kirkendall, would allow students to use iPad apps to vote for Student Body President and Vice President, as opposed to traditional voting machines.

If implemented, the students argue, the plan would save the SGA anywhere from $5,000–$7,000, the difference between renting voting machines or purchasing iPads that can run the blockchain-enabled voting apps.

The SGA’s elections chair, Emma Harrison, was optimistic about the plan, but said she believes that the technology would need to be tested more widely before it is implemented.

“I don’t see it working for this SGA election since it’s so soon, but if it were approved it would probably go into place for the next Homecoming election.”

Objections raised

Not everyone at the college is onboard with testing a new and emerging technology for the election, however.

One issue taken up by a campus advisor is the fact that Kumar and Kendall have created the app they want to implement, called SureVoting.

“I love the idea, I love the premise. But I find something a little unethical about someone who is going to vote in the election being responsible for the coding of the results of the election,” SGA advisor Daniel Brewster told the newspaper.

Elsewhere, Kumar made the case for the plan by emphasizing the benefits of the blockchain’s immutable digital ledger.

“Votes that are entered in the blockchain can never be altered or deleted by us – the coders – or by a University administrator or by a student,” Kumar said.

Representatives from the WVU SGA did not respond to requests for further comment as of press time.”

Gerrymandering (jerrymandering) is bad for the citizens of the US because it is a form of manipulation. We believe that if an internet voting system were to take hold in the united states, this entire process would become obsolete. Partisan gerrymandering makes the distribution of voters more consequential than their raw number, resulting in wasted votes. The US can not afford to lose any votes.